Aluminum Foil Dryer Sheet

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My post is late today. There’s a reason for that. In order to tell it to you, we must rewind to this morning at 6 a.m.

Husband and I were awakened by a tapping as of someone gently rapping at our windowpane. It was not a raven. But it was a bird. A persistent bird. A bird that would not give up its not-so-gentle tapping.

I was content to put a pillow over my head and sleep through it, but husband muttered something about “piece of crap stupid goddamn fucking bird,” and got up to smack at the window with a pillow. That worked for like 3 minutes.

And then husband came back with a step-stool and some sticky notes and worked up another solution. That worked for exactly 3 seconds.

Eventually we gave up. Husband left for work and I got up to start my day… and realized we had no internet.

And now we must rewind even further to the evening before, when husband tried to “fix” our issue with the failing UPS by plugging everything (including internet thingies) into a power strip.

So this morning, in my bird-induced sleep-deprived state, I went in to check on the router and all that other crap that makes the internet go and reported all lights to be turned on and flashy. But then I went back out to my computer and still no internet. I repeated this process a number of times. It wasn’t until about 2 in the afternoon that I went back there for something else, opened the curtains, and noticed that the little lights on the router thingies were no longer flashing.

I knew those little fucks had been flashing earlier, so I crawled around under the desk and inhaled dust bunnies and other gross shit while I followed power cords and made sure everything was plugged in. I flipped the switch on the power strip off and on…

And then I had a slow-motion moment of clarity. The power strip was plugged in to the wall… where the lamp used to be… and the lamp could be turned on and off… with the light switch. I turned on the light switch and, lo, my internets returned.

I know, I’m on a laundry kick this week. I’m just rolling with it, since it means I have clean laundry.

I haven’t used dryer sheets in years, mostly because I don’t care that much about my laundry being extra soft and smelly. I do use these:

They’re a little worse for the wear, and I don’t know if they do any good, but I always run them through the dryer with my stuff. So the idea of throwing something like a ball of aluminum foil in the dryer doesn’t seem that weird to me.

I did get a lot of interesting warnings when I pinned it though. Stuff like:

OMG you’ll catch your house on fire!

You’re going to tear up all your clothes!

The foil won’t catch on fire, but you might build up enough static to start a fire from the spark!

I appreciate you all looking out for me. But I tried it anyway.

I made a ball of foil about the same size as my dryer balls.

And then I took one of the dryer balls out of the dyer and replaced it with the foil ball.

And I did a load of towels.

I hate to be a spoilsport, but nothing caught on fire. And I realize I didn’t have any delicates in this load, but nothing got torn up either.

In fact, the only damage was a little further beating up of the one dryer ball I left in there.

My dryer was undamaged.

And my towels are… um… towely. As I’m not really sure what this thing is supposed to do, I guess it did it. I don’t have a huge problem with static in my towels anyway, but, um, maybe I would if I didn’t use dryer balls, or something.

In any case, you will not catch your house on fire if you do this. Go with my blessing, children.

You can reuse the foil ball a couple times but after that it starts falling apart and leaving little foil pieces everywhere! And it actually seems to take some of the static OUT, not make things static-y. And it takes less time to dry your items because the foil heats up and bounces all around with the clothes. My personal opinion is you just have to weigh out the pros and cons and it may or may not be good for everyone. And as for your switched outlets….aren’t they a bitch sometimes!?!?

5 hours to dry a load? A new dryer would pay for itself in the energy savings alone. It appears that you are trying to lower your debt so I assume you don’t want to finance a new dryer, but maybe you could hang them to dry and apply the energy savings from that towards a new dryer?

I rent. And I do hang hang the clothes to dry…I hope you didn’t think I was asking a serious question about using a huge wad of foil to dry my clothes faster. The landlord won’t fix the dryer, he keeps avoiding my phone calls and I’m working on moving out.

CatherineMarch 6, 2013 - 1:04 pm

No, I didn’t think you were serious about that, I was just concerned about the length of time it takes to dry a load. Here I was being serious when you were just trying to make a joke. I swear sometimes, I’m totally socially inept.

I’m going to try this tomorrow afternoon when I plan to do laundry and totally put wrap my lunch in the foil first. Multitasking! While my lunch is warming up, my laundry will be drying, freeing myself up for other mundane tasks that need done! Genius!

When we went to Australia we kept complaining about outlets in our hotel room. Then in our friends house..and their parents’ house… Yeah, every single individual plug is controlled with an individual switch. Each outlet has two switches and I could have saved myself $50 on a new flat iron if I had realized that sooner. Damn eco-friendly tree hugging kangaroo lovers!

Mmmmm, saves you a butt load on your power bill though. The power consumption nazis over here reckon it saves about $400 a year if you switch off the outlets when they’re not in use. And who are we to question it !!

I did the same damn thing with the power. I had my nephews at the house and the power in our bedroom kept going off and on all day long. My husband leapt to every conclusion…from mice eating the wiring to a short…all which added up to having a pricey electrician over. And then I remembered the light switch…sonuva!

I tried the foil ball. If you squeeze it tight, it will not fall apart. But it only seems to works for about a week before it needs to be replaced. I switched to felted wool dryer balls. They only looked nice until you use them but they seem to work. They don’t reduce the drying time but do reduce the static.

Wow, you really saved some money there. Normally I spend like $8/decade on a dryer ball. So, that’s like, almost a whole dollar a year. You could, like, buy a stick of gum or something. People who do shit like this, are they like people who coupon like mad because they can’t bear to part with a single penny?

Well, I make my own dryer sheets, laundry detergent, and fabric softener. It isn’t that I’m too stingy to part with a single penny (I don’t coupon) it’s more so that the detergent is easier on my washer and my sensitive skin, and the dryer sheets are free of all the nasties that tend to be in dryer sheets.

I do the homemade stuff too…and it’s because I’m cheep! We’re a family of 6 on one income! And it’s also better on my machine and my skin (eczema loving skin). And come on, who doesn’t like spending $10 a year on laundry soap?!?!

Once upon a summer, there was a bird that would fly into my bedroom window, every day, way to early for a kid on summer break. We put a rubber snake up there and that solved the problem. (and then you have a rubber snake for later!)

We work with aluminum at my work, so I thought the whole “catching on fire” warning seemed bogus and I Googled a bit. Via the Straight Dope I found the Alcoa materials saftey sheet for aluminum foil. Not flammable. (p.2, section 5) Booya!

I don’t think anyone’s worried about the aluminum itself catching on fire, but rather whatever’s in there with it. However I’m not sure why that would happen either. Maybe people are thinking of foil balls in microwaves?

My mom has two outlets in her living room that are controlled by the same light switch, but it only affects the top plug. She uses this to turn her Christmas tree on and off. One day over Christmas break when we were kids, my mom came in and turned the Christmas tree off. Unfortunately, my brother was in the middle of an intense round of Zelda (he had been playing for about three hours at this point and gotten further than he ever had before). Sadly for him, he had plugged his game system in the top plug, instead of the power strip plugged into the bottom plug. I still have yet to see a teenage boy cry as much as he did.

I use aluminum foil in my dryer and it does work very well for static except with fleece or other high static fabrics that get staticy even with dryer sheets. I loosely wad up a ball of foil and use it for about 20 loads of laundry, then it gets tossed in the recycling bin. 🙂

You are fucking hilarious!! That’s all I have to say about that. On topic though, I tried the aluminum ball when my jerk brother in law stole my fabric softener and it didn’t work to stop static for me.

I was waiting for this not to end so well. My first reaction was yikes, but I was pleasantly surprised that the dryer did not catch on fire at all. I didn’t realize dryer sheets were for more than just static. Also you are hilarious.

Ignitions from heat/sparks/static are a possibility but only if you have a gas fuelled dryer and a gas line leak. Or, you have doused your newly washed laundry load with lighter fluid, then placed them in the dryer for a good tumbling on high heat. One is much more likely to have a house fire from having the built-up layers of lint in the vent duct and/or lint trap/screen or around the drum itself. Those are a reality and should be dealt with immediately and regularly., if for no other reason that by cleaning your lint screen after EVERY load, it will perform more efficiently. If folks are getting a great deal of static electricity in their dried clothing it means they are over-drying their clothes because it is a symptom of lack of adequate humidity, just as furnace heated indoor air in cold weather dries out the air, nasal passages, wooden furniture, drywall…